Saturday, October 28, 2017

I slept well last night despite getting up once during the night.

The Colombian Peso closed at 3,007 to the US Dollar.

After lunch Laura went with me down the hill to the public library.  They have a lot of space but not many books.  They do have bean bag chairs, computers, and meeting rooms but I don’t see many book.  Laura asked the librarian where we would find the books in English.  The lady took us around the corner to a shelf that was about 3’ wide and signaled that they are here.  She left and then I found that half of them were in other languages like French and Italian so I guess that was the foreign section.  Of the rest half of those were things like an English dictionary and studying for the TOEFL test.  That left about 10 books in English.  I took 3 of the best which were Jame Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.  And each of those were only 70 pages long with pictures followed by Points for Understanding, Glossary, Multiple Choice, Useful Phrases, etc so obviously these are meant to be learning tools for the English language.  I understand I can have them for 15 days but I’ll have them back by next weekend.  I told Laura I was disappointed by how few books there were and she told me they have more at her school.

Laura took the books (booklets really) back to the apt and I met Chuck in the park.  He had with him Mark, a gay lawyer from Chicago – the same guy I met the other day on the scavenger hunt.  Mark had to be somewhere so he left and there was music being played so loudly in the park we wouldn’t have been able to talk anyway so Chuck and I went a block away to a bakery.

We were soon joined by his wife Darnelle and her friend Mary Angel.  Mary Angel is 37 years old from Venezuela.  She’s looking for a job or a boyfriend/husband but she left behind 3 kids in Venezuela and doesn’t have a Cedula.  I understand things are tough there.  We had gotten a few raindrops while we were there and the temperature had fallen – high 60s? – and coffee wasn’t enough to keep us warm.

Back at the apt Laura had gone to Caldas and I understand will be staying overnight with a girlfriend. 

Teresa suggested we go to Gourmet Pizza for dinner but then she got involved in a TV program.  She said there would be fewer people there at 8pm anyway.  After her program we took a taxi to Gourmet Pizza and the place was packed with at least 10 people waiting outside.  Teresa suggested we go to Wilson’s but I reminded her that we’ll still be outside in the cold so we had the driver drop us off across the street from La Mesa.  I pointed out the restaurant types as we walked past – Mexican, Italian, ice cream, steaks and she surprisingly had heard enough and wanted Mexican. 

We walked back to Tepito – Tacos y Tequila where we had our choice of seats on this cool evening.  They didn’t have enchiladas on the menu – I looked and even asked – so I ordered the Fajita Mixta with a limonada de coco and Teresa ordered the fish and had a beer while waiting.  My Mixta came with beef and chicken and again the beef was barely chewable.  When will I ever learn?  Teresa enjoyed her fish so much she ordered another with a strawberry juice.  I was a little concerned about having enough cash.  I was expecting to pay for pizza but I had taken a little extra so I had slightly more than 100mil.  Luckily the bill came to less than 90mil.  I joked with Teresa that if I didn’t have enough cash she could always wash dishes.

We walked back to the apt and arrived at 10pm just in time for me to start my sleep procedures before going to bed.

T-shirt of the day: Mermaid on duty.